Despite Congressman Cline’s professed devotion to the US Constitution (he likes to pull a copy from his pocket at public events), it seems his devotion to Donald Trump is even stronger.

These days Cline appears especially willing to ignore the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment. The clause states plainly that no person shall “be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” (Note: person, not just citizen.)

In his latest weekly newsletter, under the title Standing Up for the Rule of Law, Cline wrote:

Last week, President Trump rightly called out activist judges for blocking efforts to remove dangerous criminals from our communities. Using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the administration is prioritizing national security by deporting individuals who entered illegally under the Biden Administration’s failed border policies. I remain committed to upholding the rule of law and the will of the American people. President Trump was elected with a clear mandate to secure our borders and protect our communities, and I stand with him in fulfilling that mission.

One of those dreaded “activist judges” turns out to be a Trump appointee.

A federal judge on Thursday permanently barred the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law, to deport Venezuelans it has deemed to be criminals from the Southern District of Texas, saying that the White House’s use of the statute was illegal.

The decision by the judge, Fernando Rodriguez Jr., was the most expansive ruling yet by any of the numerous jurists who are currently hearing challenges to the White House’s efforts to employ the powerful but rarely invoked law as part of its wide-ranging deportation plans.

The 36-page ruling by Judge Rodriguez, a President Trump appointee, amounted to a philosophical rejection of the White House’s attempts to transpose the Alien Enemies Act, which was passed in 1798 as the nascent United States was threatened by war with France, into the context of modern-day immigration policy.

The Supreme Court has already said that any Venezuelans the White House wants to expel under Mr. Trump’s proclamation invoking the act must be given a chance to challenge their removal. But Judge Rodriguez’s ruling went further, saying that the White House had improperly stretched the meaning of the law, which is supposed to be used only against members of a hostile foreign nation in times of declared war or during a military invasion.

While Judge Rodriguez’s decision applied only to Venezuelan immigrants in the Southern District of Texas — which includes cities like Houston, Brownsville and Laredo — it could have an effect, if not a binding one, on some of the other cases involving the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act.

“The court concludes that as a matter of law, the executive branch cannot rely on the A.E.A., based on the proclamation, to detain the named petitioners and the certified class, or to remove them from the country,” Judge Rodriguez wrote.

He also found that the “plain ordinary meaning” of the act’s language, like “invasion” and “predatory incursion,” referred to an attack by “military forces” and did not line up with Mr. Trump’s claims about the activities of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang, in a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

But it seems Cline is willing to extend his lax attitude about due process even to American citizens. He joined other Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee to reject an amendment stating that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cannot detain or deport US citizens.

If Cline is OK with deporting to Honduras a four-year-old US citizen with Stage 4 cancer who was sent away without medication, he needs to say so. Loud and clear.

Despite wanting to slash Social Security by raising the age of eligibility (a special hardship for constituents working physically demanding jobs), Congressman Cline is now posing as a champion of the program.

How is he doing that?

In his weekly newsletter, under the heading Protecting Social Security for American Citizens, Cline wrote:

Many folks across the Sixth District have expressed frustration that illegal immigrants are receiving benefits meant for American citizens. 

I suspect that many more folks across the Sixth District have expressed– via thousands of phone calls and emails to Cline– their opposition to the Trump-Musk wrecking-ball approach to federal programs, as well as Cline’s refusal to meet in person with his constituents at town hall meetings. But Cline doesn’t think that’s worth mentioning.

Cline asserted:

Under the Biden administration, more than two million Social Security numbers were issued to illegal immigrants in 2024. That gave them access to taxpayer-funded benefits that should go to American workers and families. These programs were never meant to serve those who entered this country illegally.

False. The Social Security numbers were issued to non-citizens authorized to legally work in the US under a program called Enumeration Beyond Entry.

As NewsNation explains:

The EBE program that distributes Social Security numbers to migrants with work authorizations began in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first White House term. The initiative was established as a partnership between the SSA and DHS to assist the SSA in efficiently issuing Social Security numbers to migrants who were deemed eligible.

The SSA’s inspector general wrote in 2019 that the program allowed Homeland Security to vet the legal status of migrants who were eligible to work and then automatically issue them with Social Security numbers. As part of the process, migrants seeking Social Security numbers were required to provide proof of their legal status.

Non-citizens are entitled to receive Social Security benefits only under limited circumstances:

• Being legally admitted into the country as a permanent resident
• Granted conditional entry or asylum
• Paroled into the U.S. or admitted as a refugee

A 2024 analysis conducted by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy showed that undocumented immigrants paid $96.7 billion into federal, state and local taxes in 2022. The undocumented migrant employees who have been issued work permits also paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes and $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes during the same year, although, in most cases, those undocumented workers are not eligible to receive benefits from federal agencies.

Far from receiving benefits to which they aren’t entitled, undocumented workers are paying taxes for benefits they will likely never receive.

But that simple truth doesn’t fit with Cline’s obsessive need to focus on the alleged dangers posed by undocumented migrants above any and all other pressing issues.

In an interview Thursday with WDBJ TV, Congressman Cline responded to the large demonstrations throughout the Sixth District calling on him to hold in-person town hall meetings with his constituents.

Cline said while some of the protesters want to come in and meet with him, he feels many of them, including organizers, aren’t interested in having a conversation with him and only want to have their political opinions heard.

“I listen to everybody, and I welcome their viewpoints, but I won’t have my town hall meetings, which I’ve had dozens and dozens of over the years, used as platforms by one side or the other to attack one side or the other. That’s not what my town halls are for,” said Cline.

The last town hall Cline held in Roanoke was in November.

“It wasn’t six months ago that I was here in Roanoke City having a town hall. I didn’t see any of the folks out front at that town hall, but I welcome them to come in and sit down and have an exchange of ideas. We will be scheduling town halls in the future, no doubt,” said Cline.

Obviously Cline prefers tightly controlled meetings with small groups of “agitated liberals” (his words) rather than large open gatherings where he will be forced to listen and respond to dreaded “political opinions” from a wide range of constituents. And just as obviously he doesn’t want any media coverage of him dealing with difficult questions about his record and his sycophantic support for Trump.

More obvious still, Cline has watched fellow Congressional Republicans– even those representing deep-red districts– face large crowds of unhappy constituents, and he doesn’t want to have to do the same. At least for now.

But OK. Let’s take Cline up on his pledge to schedule town halls “in the future, no doubt.”

He promised this on April 24, 2025. The calendar is now ticking.

This quote from George Orwell has reoccurred to me in recent days.

Orwell was writing about leftwing apologists for Stalin in 1944, but he might just as well have been writing about Republicans like Congressman Cline.

I emailed the quote to Cline on the off chance he might see it, and on the even more off chance that it might make him think.

The fact that Steve Bannon last year served a four-month prison sentence for defying a Congressional subpoena didn’t deter Congressman Cline from a third appearance on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast on March 25.

Bannon asked Cline about the disclosure by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine that Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz used an unsecured commercial app to discuss plans for attacking Houthis in Yemen– a discussion that included specific details of the attack before it happened– and that Goldberg was accidentally included in the chat.

Instead of being outraged by a security breach that endangered the lives of American forces (as he would have been if it happened under a Democratic administration), Cline dismissed the reports about it as “a lot of noise” and blamed the media for “spinning this up.” He noted that President Trump said he had confidence in Waltz, as if this was enough to reassure us. Cline went on to put more blame on Goldberg than anyone else.

Referring to Cline’s Sixth District constituents, Bannon asked Cline “where are their heads at” after Trump’s early days in office.

Cline replied, “They could not be more excited about this administration, what it’s accomplished… For whatever their concerns were, they are excited about the steps this administration has taken.”

How Cline reached this conclusion is anyone’s guess. I doubt it’s based on phone calls and emails to his offices. And if he thinks a few selected meetings with mostly sympathetic people are an indication of widespread excitement about what Trump is doing, he needs a reality check.

Some face-to-face town hall meetings with his constituents would likely help with that.

Edinburg, Virginia, is a town of 1,200 in rural Shenandoah County. In the November 2024 election, Congressman Cline carried Edinburg by a nearly 3-to-1 margin.

On Thursday the Shenandoah County Democratic Committee held a town hall meeting in Edinburg and invited Cline to attend so he could speak with his constituents face to face.

He declined (or ignored) the invitation, as he has countless other opportunities since his last public meeting in November. But the town hall went ahead without him. More than 100 local residents attended, and many of them took turns addressing a large photo of the absent congressman with their questions and concerns. They all mentioned that (MAGA claims notwithstanding) they were not paid to be there.

Watch it here:

Chris Graham reports at The Augusta Free Press:

A bipartisan group of Virginia lawmakers is pushing back against the Trump USDA’s move to cancel $500 million in funding for food banks.

Not surprisingly, the USDA is not commenting publicly on the cancellation of previously-approved funding through The Emergency Food Assistance Program, which comes on top of the decision handed down from the Trump/Musk DOGE to cancel two Biden-era programs – the Local Foods for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program – that provided more than $1 billion nationally for schools and food banks to purchase food from local farmers.

The lawmakers made their case in a letter to USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins.

“Through TEFAP, USDA purchases nutritious commodity food from growers and producers, which is then provided to state agencies. Those agencies then deliver that food to distributers, including food banks and community organizations at no cost,” they wrote.

The letter was signed by Virginia’s two Democratic senators, Tim Kaine and Mark Warner, as well as by all of the Commonwealth’s Democratic House members. They were even joined by three House Republicans– Morgan Griffith Rob Wittman and Jen Kiggans– not previously known for standing up to any actions by the Trump administration.

And what about our own Ben Cline? His signature was notably absent from the letter, as was that of Republican John McGuire.

It increasingly appears that Cline deathly fears doing or saying anything that might be construed as criticism of Trump– even if it means hurting local farmers and depriving local food banks of necessary commodities. Either that or he is perfectly fine with what Trump is doing.

Probably a combination of both.

Here’s the link.

OK, I get that Congressman Cline’s office is unlikely to have a form letter at hand addressing job losses at the Fish and Wildlife Service. But this one wasn’t even close.

(And not for the first time.)

In an apparent effort to restrain demands from his constituents for in-person town hall meetings, Congressman Cline posted this on his Facebook page:

The Friends Committee on National Legislation is a Quaker organization. As you can see from their website, their views and priorities do not often align with those of Cline and his fellow Republicans.

So while some may give credit to Cline for meeting with a group of his political opponents, I think it’s safe to say that he will ignore everything they told him.

Shortly after his meeting with the Quakers, Cline spoke to a dinner meeting of the Shenandoah County Republican Committee, where he expressed his true feelings.

According to a source who attended the Republican meeting, Cline said he had been in his Harrisonburg office meeting with “agitated liberals” who want to give money to Palestine, and was glad to be back in Shenandoah County, where, he said, he is supported.

So not only was Cline insulting the Quakers, but he was also insulting the people of Harrisonburg.

Cline went on to say that under Donald Trump, the country is moving in the right direction; that Trump has assembled the best cabinet; that he thanked Trump for dismantling the Department of Education; that the judiciary needs to be “reined in”; and that the 2017 Republican tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefited the ultra-wealthy and corporations, were “for the common family.”

And sorry, Congressman: Your constituents still demand in-person town hall meetings.

Last year the Republican-friendly Roanoke Star reported:

On Saturday, March 16, Representative Ben Cline (R-6th Dist), participated in Freedom First St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Downtown Roanoke. The mix of the Parade’s beauty and the warm weather created a joyful environment for people. As he does every year, Rep.Cline returned to Downtown Roanoke to engage and celebrate with the public and become a part of the St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.

Not every year, it seems. Cline was notably absent from this year’s parade. The Roanoke Times reported:

Not everyone was there to celebrate. Around 30 protestors stood across the Roanoke main library during the parade, holding signs and waiting to see if Rep. Ben Cline, R-Botetourt, would be there. Cline did not participate in the parade.

Protesters have been gathering outside of Cline’s office in Roanoke each Monday since Feb. 24 to request a town hall and to express their opposition to President Donald Trump’s policies. The group Roanoke Indivisible has been leading many of the protests.

Kristi and Michael Strange with Roanoke Action Collective were among Saturday’s demonstrators. The pair has never protested until recently, Michael Strange said.

“I am very frustrated that our United States representative refuses to meet with the people — with anyone, really,” Kristi Strange said. “We have questions. We would like answers.”

Though Cline was not in the parade, state Sen. David Suetterlein, R-Roanoke County, was. The protesters chanted at him as he passed by.

“The scuttlebutt was that (Cline) had planned to be here, and then when he heard that people were going to be here in opposition, he backed out,” Kristi Strange said.

No one was available Saturday from Cline’s staff or Downtown Roanoke Inc. to give details on whether or not Cline ever intended to participate in the parade.

Perhaps Cline had a perfectly good reason for skipping the parade. But maybe– just maybe– it was another instance of Cline trying to dodge public exposure as he continues to stand up for an increasingly unpopular Musk-Trump administration.